


Isles of the Blest

by Annie Christ (SmokedSalmon)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Blood Kink, M/M, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 01:31:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3510161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokedSalmon/pseuds/Annie%20Christ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of the Ovidian myth about Galatea and Pygmalion; the master sculptor, Xemnas, loses his lover to the Aegean Sea, sending him into a decade long obsession of sculpting the dead boy in the image of Eros. After years of prayer, the gods hear his pleas to bring his lover back only for his wishful thinking to be defiled by Hestia's demigod son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Isles of the Blest

**Author's Note:**

> For Claire

 

### I.

The marble beneath Xemnas' hands left behind glacial burns that regurgitated the fact that his lover was dead. He dragged his cheek down the chiseled pallor of his latest work's left pectoral, draping his arms around the throat that neither gulped nor swallowed in his presence, and he _listened_. He waited for the reverberation of life, the pads of his fingertips stroking the silky flesh of shoulder blades that didn't indent beneath the weight of his grip, and then he prayed. He prayed for the warmth of spring to eat veins into the contoured anatomy and prayed for the gods to forsake all of his indiscretions and give him one chance to make amends.

"And when you come back to me," he whispered, fogging the surface. "I will disembowel all of Thanatos' afflictions and show him you're worthy of the Fortunate Isles."

Xemnas had never been able to conceive Ventus' death as an accident. A decade before he had asked to sail along the sleepy Aegean Sea's shoreline, coyly stroking the nodules of Xemnas' spine who, at that point in his young life, had not gone by Xemnas but another name entirely. A name that had eagerly drifted from Ventus' mouth both when he admired the potential master's work and when he spread his thighs beneath the draping veil framing the bed they shared. Ventus had been a boy made of barley and minty pleasure, a youth with heavily clustered grapes and the demeanor of a chaste tree. Xemnas saw him as the Narcissus who'd finally loved another, by chance spotting Xemnas' reflection passing by in the pond and becoming enthralled with his ability to make beauty from nothing.  _How lucky I am_ , Xemnas had thought.  _How very lucky._

"You love me?" Ventus asked when Xemnas told him he couldn't sail.

"Maybe tomorrow."

"I'll go alone." It sounded like a threat.

"Then go." And so Ventus went.

Ventus didn't return, and for the first week Xemnas believed Ventus had run away. His boat was discovered some weeks later by an unsuspecting fisherman, washed up on a nearby atoll without a body; and those who knew Ventus proposed, and eventually accepted, the idea a sea nymph had noticed his splendor and coaxed him off deck. There was no way to accept the demise of someone who'd gnawed him open; his guts spilled time and time again like the bird to Prometheus' abdominals. All in the name of love. It had always been love.

To deny Ventus had been gullible would've only burdened him with a continuation of sleepless nights that drenched his linens and distracted him from his work; work that had devolved into a collection of sprightly boys who, as time passed, grew closer and closer to the resemblance of the deceased. The obsession was as intrusive as it was profitable. Xemnas' patrons reveled in the emulations of Eros, commissioning him again and again for lithe figurines of idealized nakedness. Each time he finished one of the renditions he embraced the chilly ivory with desperately entangling arms and knew Ventus would be leaving him again. He would tell him to go, push him into the ownership of another's longing gaze, and afterward spend the night repeating the same two words like a chant.

_Then go._

But this newest creation was not like the others. It was intentional; crafted directly from memory and meant for his private viewing. Every morning he rose with the sun and brushed his fingers along the slender shoulders that'd appeared from the block of marble, revealing more and more with each passing hour as if slowly resurfacing from the sea. Xemnas was luring Ventus from the water in the same fashion the siren had lured him into its depths. He knew not the permanence of death for he had never allowed Ventus to erode from the forefront of his mind. The boy had lingered in the corners of his studio, growing more and more iridescent through the shadows of death's attempt at obscurity. That was the only thing death itself had to offer, and Xemnas had mastered its erasure.

"Come back to me," he murmured against lips that were too cold for him to pretend. They were icy and damp from the cruel condensation that left Xemnas pining for the other's tongue. He recalled the first time he'd told Ventus to open his mouth during a kiss, and the furrow of thick brows followed by unabashed hesitation haunted him when he touched the crook of the statue's dead neck. Ventus had been a closed bloom and son of a wealthy merchant when they'd met, and Xemnas had asked him to flourish in his nursery and not his father's. He'd devoted himself wholeheartedly to the idea of succeeding Xemnas in more way than one, and Xemnas asked himself –  _but for what_?

Though cruel, the gods weren't pitiless, more so Aphrodite than the rest. She loomed overhead in a state of unapologetic boredom, watching Xemnas' displays of affection for Ventus, both impressed and contemplative. Her fascination didn't linger with the sculptor, long due to the knowledge that his dead lover was in fact not dead but making love to the god Vanitas in an isolated dream realm. Instead of caring for the flighty love loss, she was enchanted by the resemblance the statue had to Eros, her son. To no one's surprise (not even herself), he was her favorite child. It was why, after she peered closer at the alabaster face with reaching fingers, she thought to scatter her favoritism onto the world by breathing life into the being she would name  _Roxas_. This incarnation would be a gift to her son and would remind human beings that there was power in the pantheon.

"Roxas, be a being of blue hyacinths and white carnations; the only being who'll soak the heat of Hestia's bastard son," Aphrodite said and kissed both of his cheeks. "Be honest and kind."

His face began to flush with color, and she smiled in her own satisfaction when his skin and joints became malleable, the violent beating of a new heart thrusting toward his ribs. Roxas inhaled sharply with lungs that stung enough to make his eyes tear and drip, but she refused to soothe him.  _Birth is painful_ , Aphrodite decided as she wrung her hands as if cleansing them of her dirty work. The bemused boy's stare, wide as plates, lit with emotion only available to someone as juvenile as himself and then all at once snuffed out like a suffocated wick. He couldn't see his mother lingering in the shadows when he reached up to drag his own fingers along the bridge of his small nose and the defined bow of his upper-lip. He grazed the pads of his digits along his cutting cheekbones and petted blond cowlicks that flicked toward the sky in tumultuous waves, and then paused when his skin was brushed by a draft.

Roxas looked around. He had no idea where he was, who he was or what the entire relevance of his existence could be, but Aphrodite's divinity soaked him to the bone. Anchored in his new reality by a manufactured soul, he attempted to step off the pedestal while sucking his bottom lip and crumpled with a dead thud, his limbs like a foul's in all their awkwardness. Roxas cried out as soon as the dusty stone scraped his knees and knobby ankles, and he stared in horror when meres of blood bloomed to the surface of his skin and branched off into dirty translucent rivers. Blood rained onto the floor in splattering droplets, echoing in his ears like thunder, and Roxas anxiously brushed his fingers through his hair while forcing breaths through clenched teeth.

" _You_ , what are you doing here? Are you sitting for Xemnas?"

The hazy voice came from an arched doorway, and Roxas jumped while squeezing his trembling hands. He scooted himself back against the pedestal that'd once been cold and comfortable. Eyes scooped from the shore of Cythera flickered toward the sudden speaker, and Roxas experienced the sensation of vividness for the first time. The stranger's eyes were a forest's canopies, deliriously illuminated but possessing darkness for predators to limberly roam through, and though there were tall windows on every wall both beside and behind him, Roxas would've guessed the source of light derived from this man and him alone. Him with his thin lips and awkwardly triangular face that suggested an alien origin; Him with his wild vermillion hair that was knotted and unclean; Him with his olive skin and tear drop tattoos, once branding him a slave, beneath consistently amused eyes.

"You're bleeding," he observed and strode toward Roxas who covered his face in shame. "And apparently frightened. What happened to you? Xemnas didn't leave you in here all day, did he?"

It wasn't possible to tell the other he'd been born only a minute before, so Roxas decided not to say anything at all. He concentrated on the orange darkness behind his fingers and his skin rippled when the stranger reached beneath the crooks of his awkwardly splayed knees and lifted him while cradling his back. He was unaware of his own nakedness until the prickly fabric of man's clothing brushed against his bicep and the licorice odor of anise oil reached his nose. He leaned in to sniff and his toes curled at the combination of dirt, sweat and masking oils that created a warm musk, only to unfurl when the other chuckled at the gesture. Roxas looked up at his pointed chin and reached to curiously touch it only for his carrier to visibly flinch and turn his head with a raised eyebrow.

"What's your name?" He asked.

Roxas had to think, but Aphrodite whispered the answer for him. "Roxas."

"Roxas," the man repeated, tasting the syllables. "Roxas, I'm Axel."

Axel sat Roxas down on a rickety bench in the back of a modest smoky room. Beside his feet sat a smoldering hearth that crackled suddenly enough to make him start. Behind the seat rested a low bed that resembled a repurposed nest, and Roxas wanted to crawl into the thick twisting fabrics. He was oblivious to the stacked plates and crumbs scattered along the side of the thin mattress. Axel held a palm up to signal for him to stay put and disappeared through the doorway, his footsteps growing unnervingly distant. Upon looking around more, Roxas realized that this was Axel's space. He wondered if he would also have a space, but then again, Roxas didn't even know how one acquired a space or if everyone was allowed to have one.

"You look like one of Xemnas' muses," Axel said while walking back into the room with a basin of water in hand. He set it down on the ground, took a seat at Roxas' feet and grabbed an ankle. Roxas jerked his foot back in surprise, and Axel scratched at his temple with his lips uncertainly twisted to the side. "I'm just cleaning the blood off your legs. Did you want to do it yourself?"

"It hurts," Roxas said simply, and Axel laughed because Roxas' skittishness had evaporated from his voice. He'd all at once become comically matter-of-fact.

"Looks like it does." He grabbed the rag and smoothed the soaked linen up Roxas' shin as he held the back of his ankle. "I'll be careful."

The white cloth collected plumes of pink as soon as it settled against Roxas' split knee. Axel concentrated on the task at hand, entirely unaware of Aphrodite's reproachful gaze from the doorway. She stood slumped with her shoulder firmly pressed against the frame and arms folded over her breasts. The two were enveloped in one another without an actual conversation, which was how she knew she'd done right by her own standards. She pushed her fingers through her loose strands, adjusting an ornamental hairpiece and noncommittally waved at the two men who she knew would be squealing like the pigs together in due time. The thought of mocking Hestia pulled her away from the potential show, and she strode down the hall, passing Xemnas as he walked through the front of his home. Aphrodite didn't look back and instead disappeared in the first glimmer of sunlight that caught her milky wrist.

 

### II.

Xemnas sought out his assistant Axel not knowing the trusted employee was leaned forward between his creation's knees. Axel's bloodstained mouth tenderly sucked the crease of flesh along the side of Roxas' knee, creating painterly streaks as he kissed down his calf toward his injured ankle. The wound had attempted to congeal, but Axel dragged the flat of his tongue along the broken flesh and sucked, moaning due to the taste. Roxas hissed but the hiss dissolved into a short laugh because there was something about the aftermath of each lick that flooded his navel with heat.

"Axel," Xemnas called out, and Axel jerked back. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stood quickly and grabbed one of his blankets. He draped the musky fabric over Roxas' shoulders that sagged beneath its weight, but he reached out for the other's hand. Axel kissed his knuckles only to drop his fingers and open the curtain with an unmoved and infuriatingly smug smile. There stood Xemnas, arms folded and gaze hardened. Roxas visibly recoiled at the sight of him and tried not to breathe. "Axel, you're needed…"

Whatever Axel was needed for was subverted when Xemnas spotted Roxas. Roxas attempted to will himself invisible but soon realized that was something living creatures couldn't do. Xemnas forgot about Axel's existence and pushed past him with all the weight he could muster. Someone had answered his prayers, and after a decade of self-inflicted loneliness and weaving in and out of temples, he'd been reunited with the only person he'd been capable of loving. Ventus was exactly as he'd remembered last seeing him. The curve to his shoulders showed no signs of death but was bronzed and ruddy from hours of exposure to the sun's beams. His lips were pinker than he remembered, but unbeknownst to Xemnas; it was from Axel kissing them hard with pulling teeth. There was no way for the man to understand the two standing on either side of him had been eternally spellbound by Aphrodite herself.

"Ventus," Xemnas said and kneeled down in front of the stunned boy.

"Wait," Axel started. The hearth at their feet combusted when Xemnas wordlessly picked up Roxas, and Axel reached for Roxas without thinking, only to be cast a hard stare from Xemnas that frosted his blood. He dropped his hands at his hips and curled his fingers into fists. "He said his name is Roxas."

"His name is Ventus."

Roxas was whisked away in the arms of Xemnas, and Axel helplessly watched. It was common knowledge in the household that Ventus was Xemnas' muse, but they were only rumors Axel had never had the heart to discern as fabricated or not. Ventus had drowned at sea, vanished without a storm in sight, and so lore had it that a primordial figure had whisked him away for eternity. That was all he knew, and from what he'd gathered, Xemnas didn't know much more than anyone else. How could he have? The gods weren't ones to divulge, even when prompted. He'd learned from personal experience that, unless the situation called for bloodshed, they preferred to be hands-off.

Days passed before Axel was able to see Roxas again. It was a surprise when he finally materialized for the rest of the house to see in a short chiton that revealed completely healed and unscathed knees. Axel watched him meander Xemnas' private garden from the balcony on which he'd been painting and drank in his figure. He was a dramatic juxtaposition to Axel's barbarically tight clothing, Xemnas' spoiling nature expressed through the gold bands tightly fitted to his biceps and his thin circlet hand-crafted to look like a single circling crown of ivy. The fruit trees and their sagging branches amusingly fascinated Roxas, and Axel grinned when Roxas plucked a sticky fig from a branch, rolling it between his fingers and then experimentally taking a bite.

"You're alive!" Axel called out, then leaning over with his forearm resting on the balcony's cool railing.

Roxas seemed perplexed by the disembodied voice until he turned around. He arched a thick brow, and that look was so far removed from their frightened introduction that Axel couldn't help but lean over more. Roxas finished chewing while watching Axel, and it was obvious he was carefully choosing his words.

"I believe I am." He examined the figs in his palm and sorted through them. "That's a very high place to be."

Axel's smile only grew. "Do you want me to come down?"

"Possibly." Roxas stuffed a whole fig in his mouth. This time he wouldn't look at Axel.

"Will I be licking your wounds again?"

"I'm afraid you'll fall from there, is all."

He looked Roxas over, and Roxas' skin simmered beneath his stare. "It's too late for that."

"Disgusting," Roxas said with a smile, as if talking to the figs.

Axel appeared in front of him moments later. He wanted to ask about his stay with Xemnas and whether or not their proprietor had been kind to him. He wasn't a fool, though. The problem with not being a fool sent Axel's head into a hive of jealousy that made his skin sting and swell at the thought of someone else wooing Roxas. It didn't make sense to already be enthralled with someone he'd known for less than a moment. There was no rhyme or reason to the nightly yearning to sleep beside an absolute stranger, but his mind clouded the moment he was in the presence of Roxas, and any reasoning he'd tried to strengthen himself with throughout the past few days was smothered.

"What were you doing up there?" Roxas asked. He was looking at Axel's pigment stained hands.

"Painting," Axel explained.

"What is  _painting_?"

He took Roxas' elbow, reached up for a fig of his own and walked the dusty path around the garden to explain that painting was flat images humans constructed from hands in lieu of moral focus. Roxas didn't trust this definition, but he accepted it enough to listen to Axel talk. The way Axel flicked the tip of his tongue along the ridges of his teeth as he thought gave Roxas incentive to pay attention, and then there was the way he held his arm. To anyone else, it might've read as possession, but there was no following caresses meant to entice more from Roxas. It was to guide him.

Axel pointed out trees, shrubs, and he explained the meaning and usage of the flowering herbs peppered along the perimeter of the yard. He let Roxas smell crushed leaves and grinned when he scrunched his nose at the medicinal vapors. He suddenly handed him a bundle of oily leaves.

"Keep these. They soothe stomachaches," Axel said.

"Smelling them makes my stomach hurt."

"Medicine usually doesn't taste or smell good."

Roxas grew sullen from his inability to make sense of that. "Then how is it good for you?"

Axel stared at him and realized he wasn't sure how to answer. "It just is."

From the doorway on the other side of the garden, Xemnas watched their interaction with a cup in hand. He was fixated on Roxas' expressions that easily lazed in and out of emotions in the presence of Axel. The first night he'd swept Roxas into his bedroom he'd asked if he remembered their time together. Xemnas told Roxas his name was Ventus even though Roxas promised him that wasn't true. He called him Ventus anyway and attempted to remind him of the day he'd sailed away, but Roxas again promised he knew of no such incident, and from what he could gather death was supposed to be like, he'd also never experienced it.

Xemnas wondered if the gods had made a mistake, but he knew that thought alone could get him killed. Whether or not it was true. Either way, it wouldn't have been the first time they exposed their true colors as 'immortal humans,' and Xemnas was livid that the gods had allowed Roxas to be an autonomous being from Ventus.

"These petals taste sweet and are safe to eat." Axel continued his lesson. He plucked a couple of blue petals, placed one on his tongue and gestured for Roxas to do the same. "See?"

Roxas followed his example, scrunched his nose and then smiled. "It's sweet but…"

"Bitter? Like salt."

"Yes."

Xemnas couldn't watch them any longer, and he vanished into the house with cold marble beneath his bare feet. Something would have to be done about Axel, and he knew the cleanest method was poison. No one would question the death of a boy who'd only recently acquired freedom. His art wasn't particularly inspiring, and his few patrons would easily find someone to replace him upon hearing about the untimely death. Then he would be able to conform Roxas to the life he'd once had with Ventus. After all, Roxas was his creation. Ventus had been his. There was no room for someone as disposable as Axel's kind.

 

### III.

With every sunset Axel and Roxas parted ways. This happened for what Axel would've considered a lifetime. Honey afternoons thick with warmth and sweetness created a bridge between them, and neither could deny the ivy creeping up both of their hearts. Whenever Roxas paused just long enough, Axel slid his arms around the boy's boxed hips and swayed him to the side with his face buried into the crook of his neck. Roxas always reached up into his dreaded hair, lightly pulled to keep him in place and attempted to think up the word to describe how those moments made him feel. They were so unlike Xemnas' rehearsed affections that chilled Roxas' limbs and led him to believe he knew how to experience winter during the warmest of months.

"We could runaway," Axel murmured along the patch of skin beneath Roxas' earlobe.

"Run to where?"

"Wherever you want to go."

Roxas considered this. "I keep dreaming about the sea."

"Then we'll go to the sea."

They kissed to keep from considering the danger of the situation. Xemnas wouldn't let Roxas go after ten years of pining for him, and the impending danger in the home loomed over them like a premonition. Axel wouldn't leave without Roxas, though. No matter the obvious threat, and his hands held tight to the blond's biceps while the over-the-shoulder kiss intensified. There was a hint of something painful. Something that led Axel to believe he had reason to ache in the presence of the other. Whether or not Roxas experienced the same bitter sweetness during their affections was unknown to the redhead, but even if he did it didn't stop Roxas from kissing back with confused impatience and enthusiasm for the one thing Axel had been terrified to push.

But it happened during the most unparticular sunset.

"Now." Roxas breathed the word against Axel's mouth. His legs were tightly wrapped around hips that stabbed the insides of his thighs, and Axel kept him elevated by pressing his back against the trunk of the same gnarled fig tree he'd spotted Roxas beneath for the first time.

It took Axel by surprise. "Not here."

"Yes here." Roxas was already tugging down the shoulder of Axel's draped clothing, annoyed that it was tight and made himself inaccessible.

Axel grabbed his wrist and tried not to laugh. "I said  _no_."

"But…"

"We need something to make it…" He exhaled awkwardly. "You'll see."

Aphrodite watched as Axel carried a vaguely unimpressed Roxas down the hallway and into his warmed bedroom. She waited with crossed arms, listening carefully to the shared murmuring, and then soon noted the desperate squealing she'd been anticipating for two months. It filtered down the hallway in raspy echoes that were punctuated by ricocheting pleading and the repetition of Axel's name. Roxas was nothing but stutters and panting.

The sense of accomplishment she was relishing in came to a halt when she glanced over her shoulder and spotted Xemnas pending at the very end of the hall's shadowy darkness. She pursed her lips and glanced into the bedroom where the wet skin smacking intensified until she thought Roxas would break beneath the weight of Axel's fluidity. She wondered whom he'd acquired that skill from. It was only by chance Hestia had conceived him, and she vacantly considered the idea that he was a man of fire before dismissing the thought entirely. Xemnas was on the brink of ruining everything she'd created, and the idea was enough to aggravate her and keep her attention.

They finished with the hearth in Axel's room burning brightly.

"Let's run right now," Roxas suggested while still catching his breath.

"Tomorrow," Axel sleepily promised. He tugged Roxas onto his chest and dragged his fingers through the boy's downy hair that was damp from sweat. "Tomorrow night. We have to arrange for a place to stay, and I have family in the country. We'll make our way there, and then that's where we'll start our life over. Xemnas doesn't own either of us."

"I'm my own person," Roxas said suddenly.

The flame very slowly started to dim. "You're your own person."

 

### IV.

They went throughout their morning without a single secretive glance.

The air was thick and musky like a split melon, but Roxas didn't mind the way sweat lingered down the small of his back and trickled toward his ankles. The warmth was pleasant with the right gust from the sea, and he smiled to himself whenever he could catch the panoramic view of the city below. He'd never had the chance to visit it before, but he knew he'd be able to do many of the things Xemnas had forbid him to do when he was with Axel. While Axel was physically enticing, Roxas found himself dwelling more on the small moments they shared. Sometimes Axel said things that seemed too good to be true. Things like his mother was a god, and that if he were to pray to her in the right form, then he could reach the height of his potential. Roxas told him his mother made him from stone, and though he'd only dreamt of that, Axel willingly believed him as if that answered every question he might've had about Roxas.

"I'm going to help outside," Roxas announced. "After we're finished eating. I think I…"

"Go invite Axel to join us."

He was eating a small afternoon meal with Xemnas. It was the usual spread and there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the dishes between them, which was why Roxas uncertainly stared at Xemnas.

"For  _this_ meal?"

"For this meal."

Roxas knew better than to question Xemnas' authority. He stood quickly from his bench and jogged down the hallways, up the lopsided stairs and toward the balcony where Axel had been working all morning. Xemnas had criticized him more than once for painting outside, but Axel was bolder than Roxas in challenging their benefactor.

"Roxas…" Axel greeted him with paint covering his arm. When he saw Roxas' uncertainty he stopped smiling. "Did something happen?"

"Xemnas asked you to eat with us."

Axel grabbed his dirty rag and began rubbing color off his skin. "Sometimes he does this. He did it more often before you were here. Don't look so concerned. It's nothing. Here – when I went to rent us a boat this morning I picked something up for you." He reached into the satchel at his feet and extracted a handful of briny seashells still damp from the shoreline. "These are all along the sea. I figured you would like to collect them? This one's blue…"

"What are they called?"

"Seashells," Axel said while closing Roxas' fingers around the brightest one. "They protect little creatures that live in the water. But the owner of these have either died or moved onto something bigger, so it's fine for you to keep them. Some people make jewelry out of them. I could make you a necklace out of this once we're settled. It's not like the gold Xemnas has given you but…"

"I like the seashells more than gold."

The redhead smiled at that and he guided Roxas out of the room and back toward where Xemnas was waiting for them. He greeted Xemnas as he always did and took his seat across from Roxas while the older man sat at the head of the table. Axel naturally reached out for his cup of wine that was customary for practically every meal and then some throughout the day, and he brought it to his lips and drank deeply from it while carefully watching Roxas' unnerved expression. Roxas' hands were tightly gripping the edge of the table and he was kneading the wood while watching his meal. He attempted to smile at Axel when the man set his cup down, but then Axel coughed.

He cleared his throat once, twice and then his confused stare shot downward to watch as blood dribbled onto grain of wood hovering above his thighs. Axel reached up for his nose in confusion, assuming his nose had started to bleed, but then realized the blood was dribbling from his eyes. He blinked once only for his eyes to sting and then shot Xemnas a knowing look. Completely unmoved, the man stared back and reached down for another bite of bread.

Roxas yelled Axel's name in horror when his ears also began to drip blood, and as soon as he reached Axel's side the man fell off the bench and hit the floor with a cruel smack. There his spine violently arched, and when he attempted to speak to Roxas, his teeth ground down hard enough to crack their enamel. His fingers contorted and locked at the joints as soon as Roxas attempted to grab his hand and hold it tight. Roxas panicked overtop of Axel, and he reached for his shaking face, helplessly swiping up the blood with the pads of his dominant fingers.

"What did you  _do_?" Roxas screamed at Xemnas without taking his eyes off Axel who was beginning to suffocate. Roxas attempted to pry his jaw open with his bare hands, blood smearing high cheekbones as he pulled with cutting nails and frustrated screams of desperation. He leaned over Axel. "Open your mouth! Axel, open your mouth!"

Axel shook his head as he tried with stifled grunting, and the vessels in his face began to pop one after another, creating blistering veins beneath the skin of his bluing face. Roxas realized he couldn't make it stop. There was nothing he could do to stop what was inevitably going to happen, and he held both sides of Axel's head while staring down at him. He chanted the word 'no' over and over again until Axel finally was able to reach up and squeeze Roxas' forearm with all the strength he had left. Not once did Axel stop looking at Roxas' face.

"Xemnas! Do something! Make it stop!" His voice broke. "Axel,  _please_ …"

Roxas felt as if he too was beginning to suffocate. The frustrated rage that started to turn his heart to cinders as Axel's eyes lost focus and aimed toward the ceiling was enough to obliterate his foundation of sanity. With blood still running from his eyes, Axel strained for air one last time before his chest finally stopped and his fight gave way. A condemning silence overwhelmed the dinning hall, and Roxas stared, internally voided, as tears poured downward onto his lover's corpse like torrential rain. He didn't blink as he took in the dying body beneath him and shakily touched what would soon be a cold shell. Roxas pushed back Axel's hair and then stuffed the heel of his palm into his mouth before screaming with the kind of blinding agony that could never encompass the grief running through him.

"Take me with you!" Roxas suddenly cried out. "Come back to me and take me with you! I'm supposed to leave with you!" He inhaled through his sobbing and held both sides of Axel's head. 

Xemnas stood up to remove to boy from the murder scene, but Roxas looked over his shoulder with a gaze that dug like a knife. He cradled Axel's heavy head on his lap and struggled to pull his frame close to him as if his youthful body could possibly fight against a man twice his age.

"Don't come near me!" Roxas panted and held Axel tighter, wondering if death was supposed to make a body feel as if it were boiling. His skin threatened to burn from holding him alone. "I'm going with him!"

"You're doing no such thing."

" _Watch me_."

Roxas went to bite through his own tongue, but a distracting cooling sensation along his arms drifted toward his shoulders. Xemnas' yell of revulsion was the only reason he looked down, and there Roxas saw that Axel's body had burst into flames and was beginning to consume his own living figure. Though the sight of melting flesh was ghastly, Roxas couldn't feel a thing when his skin melted onto the charring frame of the once beautiful man beneath him. He cut Xemnas a hard stare that was frozen even when submerged in the fire, and he leaned over Axel and kissed the burnt figure's forehead only to realize he was losing energy quickly. Without looking back at Xemnas one last time, he closed his eyes and felt as if he were simply going to sleep. The last thing he heard before awakening once more in realm of ambrosia and promised absolution were two quietly spoken words.

"Then go."


End file.
